Why Some Older Adults Show Declines in Their Spatial Memory
Aging becomes apparent in various ways, one of them being changes in memory function. But some older adults experience a faster decline in memory compared to others.
A new study by University of Arizona psychologists investigated the possible scenarios that could lead to waning memory in some older people. The researchers also studied both age-dependent and age-independent factors that could contribute to memory decline in younger and older people alike.
The study suggests that the hippocampus, a brain region associated with memory and navigation, could contribute to the difficulty in learning new environments and locations in some older adults. Neural representations in the hippocampus could explain why some people have a hard time remembering locations, said Li Zheng, a research scientist in the Department of Psychology and the lead author of the study.
UArizona professor of cognition and neural systems and a senior author on the paper, Arne Ekstrom, also said it has long been suspected that one age-related factor influencing memory could be the quality of the signal getting into a brain region, which may relate to changes in plasticity in the aging brain. The study's findings linked reductions in the quality of input into the hippocampus with age and worse spatial memory.
For more on the study and how findings may be helpful in predicting memory decline in the early stages of dementia:
Updated: 12/19/23